IXV post-flight reconstruction and analysis of the aerothermodynamic measurements along the rarefied portion of the reentry trajectory

Marc Schouler (1) , Ysolde Prévereaud (1) , Luc Mieussens (2)

1 DMPE, ONERA, Université de Toulouse [Toulouse]
2 IMB - Institut de Mathématiques de Bordeaux

Following the reentry of the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle in 2015, a lot of efforts were carried out at the ONERA for the post-flight analysis and the reconstruction of the heat flux applied to the vehicle. This flight represents a unique means of validation of the computational tools employed for the design of such mission. The aim of this paper is to exploit for the first time these data in the rarefied portion of the vehicle’s reentry. In this context, DSMC simulations were performed between 115 and 90 km and a CFD computation was made for the 90 km flight point. In the standard numerical conditions, different degrees of agreement are obtained and a sensitivity analysis to various numerical and atmospheric parameters provides several ways to significantly improve the results. In addition, the DSMC and CFD comparison provides a good agreement for the surface quantities and suggestions to reach a better level of consistency between both methods and the flight data are finally discussed.

Mots clés: Direct Simulation Monte-Carlo; Computational Fluid Dynamics; Rarefied hypersonic flow; Earth reentry; Experimental and flight data; Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Marc Schouler, Ysolde Prévereaud, Luc Mieussens. IXV post-flight reconstruction and analysis of the aerothermodynamic measurements along the rarefied portion of the reentry trajectory. International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 2021, 178, pp.121582. ⟨10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2021.121582⟩. ⟨hal-03284302⟩